The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ leaf that was found imbedded in her long and disheveled tresses. This was given to a celebrated botanist, with orders to learn, if possible, from what plant it had been taken. The man of science visited all the houses of the neighborhood, and critically examined every specimen of the shrub he could find. At length, in the elegant library of a young abbé, he not only discovered one of the species, but, by means of a powerful microscope, detected the very branch whence the leaf had been nipped. By dexterous management the chef, thus scientifically put on the track, brought home the charge to the priest, who confessed the murder of the young lady in a fit of jealousy, and, by depositing her body, at night, amid the dead of humbler lineage, who had fallen in the revolutionary strife, thought to conceal all knowledge of his crime.

      The lessee of an extensive 'hotel' had reason to believe that a child had entered and left the world in one of his tenants' apartments, without the cognizance of a human being except the mother; and, aware, as a landlord in Paris should be, of his responsibility to the municipal government, he communicated his suspicions to the authorities. The rooms were searched, the charge denied, and no proof elicited to warrant further action; and here the matter would have ended in any other country. But the police agent entrusted with the inquiry raked over the contents of a pigsty in the courtyard, and discovered a square inch of thin bone, which he exhibited to an anatomist, who pronounced it a fragment of a new-born infant's skull; the hogs were instantly killed, the contents of their stomachs examined, and small portions of the body found. The question then arose whether the child was born alive; pieces of the lungs were placed in a basin of water, and the fact that they floated on its surface proved, beyond a doubt, that the child had breathed; the crime of infanticide was then charged upon the unhappy mother, who, appalled by this evidence of her guilt, confessed.

      In the gray of the dawn a watchful observer may behold the two extremes of Paris life ominously hinted;—a cloaked figure stealthily dropping a swathed effigy of humanity, just 'sent into this breathing world,' in the rotary cradle of the asylum for enfants trouvés, and a cart full of the corpses of the poor, driven into the yard of a hospital for dissection.

      Summoned one evening at dusk to the sick chamber of a countryman, I realized the shadows of life in Paris. From the dazzling Boulevard the cab soon wound through dim thoroughfares, up a deserted acclivity, to a gloomy porch. A cold mist was falling, and I heard the bell sound through a vaulted arch with desolate echoes. When the massive door opened, a lamp suspended from a chain revealed a paved entresol and broad staircase; there was something prison-like even in the patrician dimensions of the edifice; the light nickered at every gust. Ascending, I pulled a cordon bleu, and was admitted into the apartment. It consisted of four places or rooms, the furniture of which was in the neatest French style, both of wood and tapestry; but the fireplace was narrow, and so ill-constructed that while the heat ascended the chimney the smoke entered the room. A nurse, with one of those keen, self-possessed faces and that efficient manner so often encountered in Paris, ushered me to the invalid's presence. He was a fair specimen of a philosophic bachelor inured to the life of the French metropolis; everything about him was in good taste, from the model of the lamp to the cover of the arm-chair; and yet an indescribable cheerlessness pervaded his elegant lodging. The last play of Scribe, the day's Journal des Debats, a bouquet, and a Bohemian glass, were on the marble table at his side. His languid eye brightened and his feverish hand tightened convulsively over mine; years had elapsed since he left our native town; he had drunk of the cup of pleasure, and cultivated the resources of literature and science in this their great centre; but now, in the hour of physical weakness, the yearning for domestic and home scenes filled his heart; and his mind reacted from the blandishments of a luxurious materialism and a refined egotism of life. It was like falling back upon the normal conditions of existence thus to behold the 'ills that flesh is heir to' in the midst of a city where such rich outward provision for human activity and enjoyment fills the senses. Excessive civilization has its morbid tendencies, and great refinement in one direction is paralleled by an equal degree of savagery in another. There is in absolute relation between the facilities for pleasure and the frequency of suicide. Of all places in the world, Paris is the most desolate to an invalid stranger. The custom of living there in lodgings isolates the visitor; the occupants of the dwelling are not alive to the claims of neighborhood; with his landlord he has only a business and formal connection; thus thrown upon himself, without the nerve or the spirits for external amusement, few situations are more forlorn. The Parisian French are intensely calculating and selfish; illness and grief are so alien to their tastes that, to the best of their ability, they ignore and abjure them. As long as health permits, out-of-door life or companionship solaces that within; the stranger may be enchanted; but when confined to his apartment and dependent on chance visitors or hireling services, he longs for a land where domestic life and household comfort are better cultivated and understood.

      The stranger's funeral is peculiarly sad everywhere, but in Paris its melancholy is enhanced by the interference of foreign usages. Over the dead as well as the living the municipal authorities claim instant power, and the bereaved must submit to their time and arrangements in depositing the mortal remains of the loved in the grave. The black scarfs and chapeaux of the undertakers and their prescriptive orders were strangely dissonant to the group of Americans collected at the obsequies of a young countryman, and seemed incongruous when associated with the simple Protestant ceremonial performed in another tongue. Under the direction of those sable officials we entered the mourning coaches and followed the plumed hearse. It is an impressive custom—one of the humanities of the Catholic—to lift the hat at the sight of such a procession; such an act, performed like this by prince and beggar in the crowded street, so gay, busy, self-absorbed, bears affecting witness to the common vicissitudes and instincts of mankind. The dead leaves strewed the avenue of Pere la Chaise, and the bare trees creaked in the gale as we threaded sarcophagi, tablets, and railed cenotaphs; in the distance, smoke-canopied, stretched the vast city; around were countless effigies of the dead of every rank, from the plain slab of the undistinguished citizen to the wreathed obelisk of the hero, from the ancient monument of Abelard and Heloise to the broken turf on the new grave of poverty only designated by a wooden cross; gray clouds flitted along the zenith, and a pale streak of light defined the wide horizon; Paris with its frivolity, temples, business, pleasures, trophies and teeming life, sent up a confused and low murmur in the distance; only the wind was audible among the tombs. Never had the beautiful Church of England services appeared to me so grand and pathetic as when here read over the coffin of one who had died in exile, and with only a few of his countrymen, most of them unacquainted even with his features, to attend his burial.

      However a change of government may interfere with a Parisian's freedom of speech and pen, the autocrat is yet to appear who dares place an interdict on his culinary aptitudes. The science of dining in Paris has, notwithstanding, its new mysteries; and in order to be abreast of the times, it is wise, instead of drawing on past experience, to take counsel of a friend who holds the present clue to the labyrinth of bills of fare and fair bills. The little cabinet of my favorite restaurant, sacred to the initiated, had the same marble table, cheerful outlook, pictured ceiling and breezy curtains,—the same look of elegant snugness; but, when we had seated ourselves in garrulous conclave over the carte, it was to the member of our party whose knowledge was of the latest acquisition that we submitted the choice of a repast; and as he discoursed of the mysterious excellences of cotelletes a la Victoria, rissoles a la Orleans, patés de fois gras a la Bonaparte, paupicettes de veau a la Demidoff, truffes a la Perigord, etc., we realized that the same incongruous blending of associations, the same zest for glory and dramatic instinct, ruled the world of cookery as of letters, and that, with all the political vicissitudes since our last dinner in Paris, her prandial distinction had progressed.

      From the restaurant to the theatre, is, in Paris, a most natural transition; and the play and players of the day will be found far more closely representative of the social tone, the political creed, the artistic tastes of the hour, than elsewhere. The drama, for instance, in vogue not long since at the Vaudeville Theatre in the Place de la Bourse, is one we can scarcely imagine successful in another city, at least to such a degree. It was Les Filles de Marbre; and this is the plot. The opening scene is at Athens, in the studio of Phidias. It is the day after that on which Alcibiades cut off his dog's СКАЧАТЬ